What does the term “abstract” really mean? A child’s definition might be “not like anything real.” As a loose classification among art dealers, it generally means not “figurative,” “representational,” or “realistic.” A more nuanced definition is the essence of a thing once surface distractions have been stripped away. The term comes from “ab” the Latin preposition for “out of” and “trahere,” the Latin verb for “draw” or “drag.” While it is true that abstract art often looks quite different from what it is intended to represent, it can be more faithful to the essence or soul of the object than a purely representational image. As an indigenous artist once commented on Western art; “You paint the way things look; I paint the way they are.” The king’s architect, Claude Nicolas Ledoux had no practical reason for placing these heavy columns so closely together. He wanted to create an effect—the visual patterns that emerge when the columns are seen from an angle. The patterns have nothing to do with the individual columns but are a collective effect that communicates an idea independent of the objects themselves.
This sculpture by a Mexican artist verges on the abstract. Everything has been stripped away except the essential elements that tell us that this is a representation of a man seated on the ground. We have almost nothing to go on, and yet we have all that we need to understand what the artist wanted to communicate. It is difficult to know if the artist was an indigenous native who lived centuries ago or is ultra-modern.
Sometimes the abstraction is simply a reference to itself. This is a sculpture in paper and light that was spotted in a shop window in Venice. The point here concerns the curves and light and how they relate to each other.
Nature is capable of creating its own abstractions. This a close-up of water cascading over rocks, but it takes a while to understand exactly what we are looking at. What is conveyed here is wild force cascading beyond anyone’s control. The only sense of perspective is provided by the slender branches of leafless vegetation in the foreground.
Many photographers prefer to work in Black and White, which already provides a degree of abstraction. When you look at the photograph, you know that you are seeing the photographer’s conception of the scene. Color is considered an irrelevant distraction. Unnecessary icing on the cake. But there are times when color itself identifies what it is that you are looking at. This construction site is seen through a steel fence that divides the whole into even squares. The base of the crane, painted yellow, is a series of interlocking triangles against the rectangles of the concrete blocks used as ballast to keep it from falling over. Finally, the white ladders offset the uniformity of the image providing a degree of unpredictability which makes the whole thing alive.
